fix uniq -c [LWN.net]

fix uniq -c

Posted Feb 12, 2025 19:05 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
In reply to: fix uniq -c by stijn
Parent article: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

Not the author but I imagine his stance is the same as for ripgrep. Writing "better" utilities that fix old wrongs is a different undertaking. These utilities are meant to be drop-in replacements and that means compatibility which means replicating old behaviour regardless of design quality. He is open to extensions like --progress but those are window dressing and not changes in behaviour.

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fix uniq -c

Posted Feb 13, 2025 13:30 UTC (Thu) by stijn (subscriber, #570) [Link] (1 responses)

It would equally be possible to add new options that add new behaviour, such as for example outputting well-formatted output, that is, usable for further consumption by adhering to a standard table format such as tab-separated data. I'll enquire.

fix uniq -c

Posted Mar 1, 2025 17:00 UTC (Sat) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link]

The trouble with writing a drop-in replacement for X while trying to also improve on X is that as X changes, you may cease to be a drop-in replacement because your enhancements become incompatible with new functionality. MariaDB ran into this problem.